On Tuesday, two stories came out of an article in L’Equipe detailing Charles N’Zogbia’s thoughts on his tenure at the football club. As with any media publicised story, bias is implied by many outlets that report news. That old idea that news is objective for the most part? Sadly a lost and alien concept to many.
N’Zogbia’s quotes taken from his interview with French newspaper L’Equipe detailed statements that could, depending on the angle one wanted to write from, be spun in a number of different directions. As we know, many concepts of opinion are based on pre-judgments and presuppositions – the thought is that what we think doesn’t vary much from day-to-day.
Your Views Don’t Change Much & Papers Know This
For example, if our views are that of supporting a particular political party, our thoughts yesterday are likely to be similar to that of the week prior, the month prior, or the year prior. Things may change in our lives, but opinions, or rather where they come from, change very little – you don’t go to sleep one evening a Conservative and wake up the next day a Labourite unless something dramatic happens in the interim period.
N’Zogbia’s statements suggesting he has been made to defend more than at other clubs he has played is neither positive or negative. Being asked to defend more is not necessarily illustrative of being ultra-defensive tactically, but could be an indicator that the team is being asked to attack and defend as a team. Yes, N’Zogbia may well be defending more than he was at Wigan, but players such as Hutton and Warnock also attack – the concept being that the team works as a unit. For example, is Pep Guardiola a defensive manager because Lionel Messi also engages in defensive duties? Are teams that have strongly delineated roles in teams better than those that don’t? Again – all subjective.
Of course, the spin taken by some journalists has been to fuel the towering inferno of bad feeling regarding the manager and much mentioned tactical choices. I have no belief that any person or side is right, but I am able to smell bias in articles a mile off. Whether you think good or bad of N’Zogbia, of the manager, of anyone, that is your choice, but it should be your choice, not because you’ve been prodded by a journalist to think otherwise.
For the media, keeping the bad feeling going and the fire of angers burning is integral to cultivating easily written stories. The longer Aston Villa are castigated as a club in crisis, whether points wise or otherwise, the more the media have ammunition to project their own biases and angles to keep the fire burning. It’s propaganda of the most basic sort, and there’s far more mileage in a misery and arguments, especially about those who are expected to be doing better than they currently are, than there are in sunshine and positivity for many of the world’s media outlets.
News Isn’t Always Objective & People Don’t Like Good News
Don’t believe me? Go and watch the news today. Look at what is being reported, and ask yourself “Is this the world I actually live in?” If you were to believe that the news was illustrative of society today, you would think that murder was far more prevalent than it actually is, that Britain’s multicultural society was somehow far more diverse than it really is, and that the world is going to hell in a hand basket both domestically and internationally.
Is it though? Is the world a lot more awful than it was a generation or two ago? Or hundreds of years ago? Or are we, in our always on world, merely fed more information, and from a larger area, to believe that things are worse than they really are?
All of this shows that bias, in this case regarding N’Zogbia’s recent statements, is easily applied to an argument. Journalists know this, papers know this, and editors know this. If the popular view is to write articles that support the sacking of a disliked person, then papers will gravitate to that angle under the banner of “giving the people what they want”, when in reality many news sources are merely doing what is best for them and their profits, and not what is best for the fans of our club or any other.
So is N’Zogbia happy? Even the media disagree on statements. Yesterday Sky published comments to suggest that N’Zogbia’s issues with the manager were in the past. Eurosport span it in a manner to suggest that being asked to defend is something N’Zogbia doesn’t want to do, and that the issues are firmly in the present. Who is at fault in the N’Zogbia situation? Is anyone at fault at all?
All Opinions Are Valid, But Many Opinions Imply Personal Biases
Again – your opinion will be based on your own presumptions and feelings towards the relevant people, also known as confirmation bias. If you think a person is bad, you will be more likely to extrapolate the bad characteristics in that person, and vice versa if your view is good. Ergo if you like N’Zogbia and/or dislike McLeish, you are more likely to support who you like, and reject who you don’t like.
Opinions are just that – opinions. That is they aren’t facts, and they aren’t definitive, they are merely viewpoints that have been formulated by you or I in line with what we have or haven’t heard. What I think or what you think is your right, your entitlement to believe what you believe based on the evidence available to you – never accept anyone who tells you otherwise.
Much of what we discuss and argue about on here is opinion based. Maybe sacking the manager could change things. Maybe Kevin MacDonald is the solution. Maybe Stephen Ireland could be a great player for Villa. Maybe Gary Gardner could be the next big thing. All of these statements are subjective – the only way we will find out if they bear our to be true is if they happen. If they don’t, and none of us here have any control over these choices, we’ll never know – all the thoughts are are just a sea of unresolved options.
What I implore people to not do is just take the easy option and just criticise if a tactic doesn’t work arguing that doing A N Other alternative definitely would have done – I don’t know that, you don’t know that, and neither does anyone else. Other outlets have made their own space by constantly saying that whatever they thought, which was the opposite of what didn’t work, and also agreeing with what did work post-game is their viewpoint.
For them, it is a way of appearing to never be wrong but, in my opinion, it is actually the bastion of the fearful – I would much rather be wrong sometimes but have an opinion rather than snaking my way in grey areas never actually saying anything until after the event.
So maybe Charlie is frustrated with the manager, but then maybe he isn’t. Nobody is saying what you should think, or what is right to think – think what you like. Just be aware that most outlets, regardless of their stature or not, will imply bias, so make your own view based on what is presented, and realising that bias may well be implied even when it doesn’t appear to be.
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